Notícias frescas (e bem frescas) chegadas da Antárctida via email

(Fotos: Anna Barford)

Hello!

I am really sorry that I cannot write Portuguese, so I hope that English is OK.

I am writing to you from Mount Erebus in Antarctica. We are living here in a hut which has a kitchen and dining room. We also have a garage where we can repair things, and there is a toilet there. At night we sleep in tents inside very thick sleeping bags, with 2 camping mats beneath us.

We are here to do 2 experiments. One is a seismology experiment, where some seismometers which measure movements of the ground have been spread over the volcano, measure the speed at which shock waves travel through the volcano. This information gives a sort of x-ray of the volcano, because the different speeds of shock waves indicated different types of matter. From this information hopefully we can work out the internal structure of the volcano.

The other experiments involve measuring gases released from the volcano. This is done by using a spectrometer to measure which parts of light arrive, and which parts are blocked out by the gases. Each gas has a "signature" because it blocks out certain parts of light. The sources of light used are the lava lake, a lamp, and the sun. This work has found that the volcano has a "pulse" (it has cycles of gas release). This is related to how the lava moves up to the lava lake.

This work is to find out better how the volcano works.

I hope that you all have a great 2009!
from Anna

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Anna Barford
Department of Geography
University of Sheffield
Winter Street
Sheffield
S10 2TN
U.K.

http://www.shef.ac.uk/geography/students/pg/annabarford.html

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Está prometido pela Anna Barford um artigo com o relato da experiência num campo científico na Antárctida, a publicar num dos números da APOGEO de 2009. Recordo que a Anna é co-autora do projecto Worldmapper, que deu origem ao livro "Atlas of the real world - Mapping the way we live".